In the fast-paced digital world that we're living in, we've seen a lot of "tech trends" come and go that were supposed to revolutionize various industries in terms of productivity, collaboration, and more.
Whenever something new hits the scene, it's easy to feel skeptical as a result.
But when it comes to artificial intelligence, it's clear that you're not just talking about something that is "disrupting" industries any longer.
It's transforming them, and it's doing it on a global scale.
You wouldn't necessarily think that healthcare and finance would be two industries that made perfect candidates for AI deployment, but they absolutely are - as people have already begun to learn.
According to one recent study, it's been estimated that AI applications can cut annual healthcare spending in the United States by as much as $150 billion by as soon as 2026.
Separate studies indicate that the value of the banking industry could increase by as much as $340 billion through the use of various generative AI tools.
Based on statistics like those, it becomes clear why so many are trying to get in on the wave of AI innovation taking place all around us.
During this time, Microsoft's Copilot has emerged as a critical tool that is reshaping operations in organizations both large and small.
In a general sense, Copilot is designed to streamline processes, make tasks like data analysis easier and more robust, and help create more collaborative environments than ever before.
On a day-to-day basis, however, even something like Copilot goes a fair bit deeper than that.
It can help organizations address some of the biggest pain points they face on a regular basis, including but not limited to ones like compliance, ethics, and even security.
In terms of implementing Copilot into an enterprise environment, there are two main types of benefits to concern yourself with.
First, there are the ones virtually every organization would get to enjoy, regardless of industry.
By automating administrative tasks, any business would naturally save time and money.
By making data more available, collaboration and communication would naturally become easier.
Then, you have the industry-specific benefits - of which there are many in healthcare and finance in particular.
As mentioned, the three most common concerns in these fields are compliance, ethics, and security.
Copilot, and to a larger extent AI in general, can help enormously with all three.
Up until now, adhering to strict regulations like HIPAA in healthcare and the GDPR in finance was something that people had to be trained rigorously on.
They had to be proactive about being compliant in all their actions throughout the day.
It took a massive amount of time and mental energy to "get right," and now Copilot can do it automatically.
The same is true in terms of data security - another top concern in healthcare and finance.
It's no secret that the average cost of a single consolidated data breach incident in the United States has been on the rise for many years.
But the financial sector was actually the most heavily targeted in 2023 - an unfortunate trend that shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
There was even a single attack that managed to impact almost 1,000 financial institutions at the same time.
As a solution, Microsoft Copilot falls perfectly in line with existing privacy, security, and compliance commitments as dictated by Microsoft 365.
The same sophisticated security measures are still used to protect data both at-rest and in-transit, and anything typed into Copilot like prompts and responses are never used to train foundational large language models.
From the point of view of ethics, not only is a tool like Copilot built with an ethical framework in mind, but all the time and energy the average person is saving can then be devoted (in part) to how to act within that framework.
Essentially, Copilot makes it easier for ethics in technology to become a focus as opposed to an afterthought the way many see it now.
Keep in mind that this is all in addition to the other advantages that Copilot offers, like how it streamlines administrative tasks, enhances data analysis, and optimizes team collaboration.
Companies can see an almost immediate return on investment in Copilot by implementing some of these use cases.
For both healthcare and financial services professionals, streamlining (and even outright automating) administrative tasks with Copilot can dramatically reduce the amount of time spent on these important-but-menial processes.
Case in point: email management.
Even a modest "after visit" summary for a patient can be a lengthy document.
Multiply the amount of these emails a healthcare professional gets by the total number of patients they see, and you begin to get a sense of just how much time they're spent reviewing things that have already happened.
Copilot can summarize those lengthy emails, saving time and making it easier to quickly communicate with others.
The same concept is true in terms of proposal generation.
Copilot can take a source document that was created in Sharepoint and use it to create a detailed proposal that can at least go onto other key stakeholders in a project for review and approval.
Other examples include Copilot being used to create dynamic presentations far faster than a human could, and the use of Excel automation.
With Excel in particular, Copilot can be used to generate complicated formulas and conduct data analysis not only faster than a human could, but far more accurately as well.
The efficiency gains that you see in these areas can free up the invaluable time of both healthcare providers and financial professionals to focus more on long-term goals.
At the very least, it will give them more time to focus on the level of service quality that they're offering to their patients and clients, which allows them to further cement their own competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Another way to look at Copilot for healthcare or Copilot for finance is as a tool that can dramatically enhance an organization's ability to analyze the massive volumes of data it is creating, all while remaining compliant at the same time.
Copilot can even help something like a financial institution extract more value out of tools like Microsoft Excel, for example.
Copilot can make it easier to sort through data, highlight anything relevant in a particular context, and more.
This makes it easier for invaluable insights to rise to the top, which in turn makes it easier (and faster) for organizational leaders to take action.
Over the long-term, by increasing data analysis efficiency while also virtually guaranteeing compliance, a tool like Copilot for healthcare can also reinforce data integrity as well.
Any business that has ever tried to go through a digital transformation will tell you how difficult it is to retroactively take data sets and bring them up to compliance standards.
Now, with Copilot, this is happening automatically.
All of this goes a long way towards not only maintaining trust with a target audience (like patients in a healthcare environment) but legality within the framework of how an organization is operating as well.
When you think of the lot of important (but routine) tasks many of us deal with on a daily basis, a lot of them are centered around two basic ideas: team meetings and collaboration.
If you want to get together to work with someone else on a project, you have to proactively make sure they have all the necessary files.
If you're going to have a team meeting, everyone needs to review the same documents and have access to the same insights.
There are a lot of steps regarding the infrastructure of it all that must be taken before anything resembling "progress" can even begin.
This is another area where implementing Copilot shines, particularly in healthcare and finance.
By automating a lot of these routine tasks, Copilot can help make it easier for people to communicate with one another.
Copilot can automatically create meeting recaps, for example, highlighting key points from a recorded meeting so that nobody misses anything important.
Copilot can even take documents in one language and translate them into another, making it easier to communicate and collaborate with others around the world.
Depending on the patient, it's entirely possible that a healthcare professional might have to collaborate with another doctor who doesn't speak English as a first language.
Now, thanks to Copilot, what would have formerly been a fairly significant barrier has been removed.
Because Copilot itself is so heavily integrated into the Microsoft 365 architecture, it can also help tremendously with tasks like email enhancement.
If you jot down a quick draft of an important email you need to send, Copilot can instantly improve it with an eye towards clarity and professionalism.
All you need to do is specify the main crux of the message you want to get across and Copilot will largely take it from there.
In addition to helping to improve the effectiveness of communication between a business and its clients (or a doctor and their patients), it also helps do the same for communication with other professionals, too.
Overall, these are just a few of the many benefits that a solution like Copilot brings with it.
There are others, too.
Are you a healthcare expert who needs to be able to weigh in on a breaking piece of news but doesn't have the time to write a 500-word blog post about it?
You can have Copilot do it for you.
The same would be true if you were a financial professional and needed to create some piece of content that onboarded new employees or that welcomed new clients.
Let Copilot do it while you focus on more important tasks that need your attention.
The same is true of information processing.
Is there a 1,000-page medical study that was just published that you don't have time to read?
Let Copilot summarize it and give you the high-end details.
According to another recent study, about 67% of people who use Copilot say they do so to enable them to focus on more important work.
On average, users report to saving about 1.2 hours every single week.
If you're a doctor, imagine what you could do with an extra hour every week to devote to patients.
If you're a financial professional, think about how much you could accomplish with an extra hour to work directly with clients.
Now, when you think about how this time-savings is only going to increase in the months and years ahead, you begin to get a sense of why people are so excited about implementing Copilot (and tools like it) as soon as they're able to do so.
If you're interested in learning even more about the immediate benefits of implementing Copilot in your healthcare or financial organization, or if you'd just like to discuss your own specific needs with someone in a bit more detail, please don't delay - contact us today.